The attacks, which also led to a slump in the country’s crude oil production to a 20-year low, disrupted Chevron’s gas supply to the domestic market, having stopped the delivery of natural gas to the Escravos Gas Plant (EGP), which processes gas for power generation and other end users.
THISDAY gathered that this has wiped off a substantial part of an estimated two billion cubic feet of gas supplied daily to the domestic market for power generation and industrial uses.
Chevron confirmed that the first attack of last Wednesday night on its valve platform, affected the Okan offshore production platform, thus leading to the shutdown of the facility.
On Thursday night, a pipeline transporting crude oil to Warri and Kaduna refineries and a 16-inch gas line, owned by the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), the gas transporting arm of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), were blown up.
Chevron’s Escravos Gas Plant provides gas feedstock to power plants across the country through the Escravos-Lagos pipeline.
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, also told THISDAY yesterday that power generation had dropped to 2,500MW due to the attacks on the Chevron facilities.
According to him, power generation had averaged 3,600MW before the Wednesday and Thursday attacks.
The drop to 3,600MW from about 5,000MW was blamed on the attack on the Forcados terminal pipeline last February. Repairs to that pipeline will be concluded next month, Fashola said.
He decried the spate of attacks on oil installations and their impact on the domestic economy.
“Which country has instances of vandalism on its oil installations like Nigeria? This is economic sabotage, but we will have to evolve a new strategy to deal with this problem. We shall attack it head on,” he said.
However, daily operational reports obtained from the Nigerian electricity system operator showed that generation as at 6 am yesterday was 2,474.10MW, down from the peak generation of 2,968.9MW recorded on Saturday.
The lowest generation on Saturday, according to the operational report, was 2,160.3MW.
The attacks have also pushed Nigeria’s crude oil production to the lowest in 20 years, as Chevron also shut down about 90,000 barrels a day of output following the impact on a joint-venture offshore platform that serves as a gathering point for production from several fields.
Even before that strike on Wednesday night, Nigerian oil production had fallen below 1.7 million barrels a day for the first time since 1994, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
THISDAY
When south Africa which is not up to our population is generating 30MW. Nawa for naija
ReplyDelete